SQUEEZE, Difford and Tilbrook – as it happens

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The gig last night was fab!!! I’ve never attempted a review before so just to prove there’s a first time for everything, here I go.

The Robin really is a nice venue considering where it is, (Bilston, my Nan was was born there and most of my family live a few miles away so it’s kinda like a home gig for me) it has a car park and everything, ooooh.

When i got there my accomplices hadn’t arrived yet, so I wondered in to get us some tickets and then i got a text message to say they would be here in 5/10 mins can i meet them in the car park, sure so off i go, on my way to my car a door opens and who walks out.. yes.. you guessed it our Mr Tilbrook. (aargh!) We both stopped and looked at each other for split second before going “oh! hello” he asked how I was, I said ok but burluddy cold, and he gave me a kiss on the cheek and a cuddle (aww :-)) I then took this opportunity to ask him something which has been quite frankly disturbing me for..ooooh.. about a week now, that is that ( I dunno if anyone else has noticed this) in the single for TIWYA, it says drums by Toto Cuelo, who in case you don’t remember had a hit in the 80’s with ‘I eat Cannibals’ I asked him if he was indeed having a larf, and he laughed and said that he was. He then said he was off to the shop so we exchanged “see you laters” and that was that.

We got in, and wormed our way to about 3rd row back just in time to see the last 2 and a half numbers from Ben Jones, who was as good as ever, move over David Gray.

The place is the biggest I have seen Glenn play solo and it was very full, i guess there must have been 300 odd people there. Glenn skipped on about 9.15, wearing the blue nike trainers/carpet slippers, jeans and a black t-shirt which had BAR written in tiny white letters in the middle. He kicked off with Messed Around, then The Truth, which was a fab version with a great solo at the end which seemed to go on forever (not that that’s a bad thing) Not very good at remembering songs but notable ones included the surprise but very welcome renditions of No Place Like Home, Melody Motel and Last Train To Clarkesville, which I have never heard him do before.

The crowd really were on top form, as they always are at the Robin, I recommend it to anyone. Somebody requested Tracks of my tears, but before he did it Glenn did a wee straw poll to see how many of us had seen him before in the last 3 years and said it was up to us to lead the others by example. He also said that his voice wasn’t what it could be due to his cold, so he was being Smokey Robinson on a bad day. When we get to outside..inside bit, guess what! we got it right first time!!! y’see, miracles by name, miracles by nature, but then he had to stop in shock that we got it right, and to tell us that it could have been a bit louder (some people are never satisfied ;-)) and we proceeded to get it wrong the next 2 attempts. ah well.

We even got the handclaps in Hourglass right the first time, I think by now Glenn was sensing that this was just to easy for us, he stopped in last train to clarkesville and told us that there was a backing vocal bit in this that goes choooooo choooooo and he would like us to try it, so we did! In tempted we did the usual Elvis Costello bits and also half the crowd doing the whooo woo hooo hoo bits and the other half going dip dip diddip dip. very funny.

He had a cup of honey and lemon tea for his cold, someone asked if there was whiskey in it, he said no and offered it to the crowd if anyone wanted to verify there was no alcohol in it, believe me if i was near enough i would have done! but no one did so he said that it must be because we didn’t want to catch his cold.

Overall, a really great gig, Glenn seemed really happy and relaxed, and it was an absolutely great crowd (except for the people chatting through his lovely version of vanity fair) Going to see him again tonight in Derby, but that will have to go a long way to beat last night.